Wednesday 21 September 2011

Chiff, Chiff, Chiff, Ooo Sedwa, Chiff, Chiff, Chiff...

And that is how the morning down the Bay for CJ, Dr O, Padwan Mike, and Facey progressed. Chiff, after chiff, after chiff, with the odd blackcap or sedwa thrown in for good measure.

CJ's face as what seemed like the 1000th Chiffchaff of the morning is processed


One of many - we shouldn't grumble.

We did get some variety, with this little gem being bird of the day...


We've caught several kingfishers this year and one thing we've failed to capture is the mad twisty-wrynecky-woodpeckery-thing they do with their heads. But to day we managed it.


It can be far more extreme than this with their heads doing nearly 360!

We also bagged a little flock of goldfinches. Now we don't like to get too technical but here we go. The picture below shows a male and female of the species; left and right respectively. The female if you look closely has pale nasal bristles where as the male's are black. Its not totally clear in this image, mainly because they are in moult, but the red on the head extends beyond the eye in male but not in the lady finch.  
We apologise for this education break in our usual service.
CJ was left manning the site, while the rest of us headed to work or thesis writing, and it proceeded much the same... ending on 75 birds.

2 comments:

  1. Are you sure the male goldie is the one on the right?

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  2. Pete, you just won a pint at the next C&B for spotting the deliberate mistake... now corrected!

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